


two sides of the same stubborn coin

by blamethenargless



Series: What's My Line, Part 2 [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: About to Die, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Trapped, but you don't need to know anything about buffy to read this, takes place during s01e11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 01:06:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16671850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blamethenargless/pseuds/blamethenargless
Summary: Adora will never let her win, will never let her go. Try as they might, they’re bound up in some thread of fate that’s wrapped itself around both their pinkies and tugs them closer with each step they take further away.orCatra and Adora hate each other. No, really, they do.





	two sides of the same stubborn coin

**Author's Note:**

> First, as always, everything belongs to the creators!
> 
> The bolded bits of dialogue are parts that were taken directly from She-Ra or from Buffy (the first bit is from She-Ra, the second from Buffy). The fic takes place during e11, starting at about 4:27 in the episode.
> 
> Enjoy!

There are spiders everywhere.

A stone slab falls across their path, and Catra thinks, _death by robotic arachnid isn’t really how I thought I’d go out. There’s probably not much worse, at least. Maybe I’ll die in such an epically terrible way that people will at least remember me as the girl that died in an epic, terrible way- by robot spiders._ But then She-Ra steps in front of her and lifts up the stone, and Catra ducks under, feeling the grit of the rock sting her heels as she skids underneath. She-Ra drops the stone again behind them, and they’re safe. For a moment.

The spider’s legs jab at the blockade. “ **Come on** ,” She-Ra says, “ **we need to run**.”

And run they do. Down the first hallway they come across, as fast as their legs will carry them.  Side by side.

The hallway branches off to the left and to the right. Catra, always a contrarian, sprints left, only glancing over her shoulder to make sure She-Ra is following her. Then, Catra scolds herself for double checking. _If she gets herself left behind, it’s her fault._ _I don’t care. Why should I look out for her, like she never did for me?_ Lies, Catra knows. But she ignores the rational part of her brain, as she’s been doing for quite a while now, and presses on.

The lights flicker out, shaking her from her thoughts. Behind them, red glowing eyes light up in the darkness, scattering the hall like menacing, evil-intentioned stars. _More spiders_. Catra hightails it away from them.

“ **What’s going on?** ” Catra wheezes in between strides. “ **Why are those things trying to kill us?** ”

“ **They’re trying to kill** **_you_ ** **. This place sees you as an invader.** ”

The spiders’ metallic legs brush against Catra’s tail. She throws her hands up in frustration. “ **Well, can’t you tell them to stop?** ”  
“ **No, I can’t tell them to stop! Clearly, nothing in here is listening to me.** ” Adora—no, She-Ra—screws her eyes tight, focus and frustration bruising her face.

Catra increases her speed and turns around another corner. “ **Adora,** ” she calls, urging her friend-turned-enemy to follow. Catra tells herself that it’s spur-of-the-moment, a fear-induced Freudian slip. This girl isn’t Adora. She’s some teenager playing dressup, playing pretend superheroes.

“ **Stand back!** ” She-Ra slashes upwards with her sword, and the ground begins to shake.

“What are you doing?” Rocks fall like snowflakes, crushing the machines and their red glowing eyes and their metal pincers. She-Ra pulls Catra in close, her arm comforting and natural-feeling around Catra’s waist.

A rock hits the ground not a foot from them, sending a dust cloud up into Catra’s lungs. She falls to the ground, coughing. When she recovers, she sees Adora lying on the ground, wiping with shaking fingers at her eyes.

“ **You shouldn’t be here, Catra. Those things aren’t going to stop until they get you. And as long as I’m protecting you, they’ll see me as a threat, too.** ” Her voice has a hardness to it, a growth that Catra can’t help but hate. Where was this maturity back at the Fright Zone? Where was her one-for-all saviour complex when Catra needed a chance to step into the spotlight?

“ **Uh, good thing I didn’t ask for you to protect me,** ” Catra scoffs.

“ **Wh– you know what? Okay,** ” Adora says. “ **Why are you here anyway? I mean, how did you even find this place?** ”

“ **It sent up a beam of light a mile high. It wasn’t hard.** ” Catra pushes herself to her feet, and steps away, turning her back to Adora. Easier to speak to her if she can’t see her face.

“ **Does Shadow Weaver know you’re here?** ”

“ **I’d say Shadow Weaver’s got bigger problems right now,** ” Catra says with a smirk. She does a half-turn, catching Adora’s cute scrunched-up nose in her periphery. “ **Why are you looking at me like that? Wait. No,** ” Catra groans, turning back around to face Adora. “ **I** **know what this is about.** ” Catra sighs, puts her head in her hands. Adora’s staring is causing her to feel flushed, and though she knows exactly why, she also knows that she hates it. “ **I knew you’d be weird about me letting you escape. I told you: it’s** **_not_ ** **because I like you.** ”

 _Don’t lie to yourself, Catra,_ whispers a voice in her head. It sounds scarily like Adora’s. _You like Adora a_ lot _. You have history with her. You can’t just take that all away because you’re fighting on different sides of a war._

“ **Anyway,** ” Catra says, refusing to avert her gaze. Her vision sharpens. “ **What are you doing out here? Where are your new best friends?** ” She spits it out, poison lancing off her tongue, and hopes they land in the space between Adora’s ribs where the most hurtful words always land and manage to stay stuck. “ **I thought you did everything together.** ”

“ **Oh, my friends. You mean the ones you kidnapped and held for ransom?** ” Adora steps forwards, her voice wavering again. “ **The ones you let Shadow Weaver imprison and curse?** ”

And Catra’s too close to breaking down. Adora’s less than a foot away, staring her dead in the eyes. Her words are broken, and her shoulders held back with pride. She looks every inch a princess. Catra would like nothing more than to wrap herself up in Adora’s arms, to say _let’s go home_ , to wake up from this nightmare and win second place in training again tomorrow. She wants to rest her head on Adora’s shoulder and let herself sob for hours, because she really could use a nice long cry right about now.

Instead, though, Catra steels her voice and she steels her heart and she deadpans with a tilt in her head, “ **Yeah. Obviously. What other friends would I be talking about?** ”

Adora lets out a frustrated groan. “That really wasn’t nice of you.”  
“Am I supposed to be nice? I’m your antithesis, Adora. Like it or not, I’m meant to oppose you.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Join me. Join us. Fight against Shadow Weaver. You have no sympathy for her; you can’t let yourself be threaded along in her crazy plans. There’s a place for you by my side.”

And _oh,_ was that the wrong thing to say. Catra feels her face burn bright with anger. “Always by your side. Never up in front. Tell me, if I were to join your little rebellion, would I have a starring role? Or would I be pushed to the sidelines again, subjugated to watching and listening and never being able to speak my mind? Sure, Shadow Weaver may be terrible. Has been terrible to me for all the sixteen, seventeen years I’ve been with her. Since I was a baby. She doesn’t even let me know my own age and birthday, Adora. But at least she’s giving me a chance to prove myself. You and your little sparkle brigade could never even imagine that possibility.” Her throat feels tight now, and her claws are burning into her palms.

Adora almost looks ashamed.

The spiders bang their legs against the wall, and Catra jumps embarrassingly high. When she comes back down, Adora’s laughing.

“Shut up,” Catra says, but she’s hiding a small smile.

Adora stops. Bites her lower lip. Flicks a piece of hair behind one ear.

Something strikes its way through Catra’s heart. Something slashes there and leaves her bleeding. Maybe it’s the artificial light casting shadows across Adora’s nose, or the cool air whispering against the back of Catra’s neck. Maybe it’s the fact that she just barely escaped with her life, and it’s all thanks to Adora. All thanks to the girl she’s trying to kill and the friend she knows she could never lay a finger on.

Suddenly, Catra’s mad. Really, really mad.

“Adora, I’m going to talk. And you’re going to listen.”

“But isn’t that what I’ve been doing? Listening? How much more do you have to say, Catra? How many times do you have to ask me to come back? I won’t come back. I’m _never_ coming back.”

In that moment, Catra knows it’s true. Adora isn’t coming back. Adora won’t come back. Adora will fight her till the last breath of air leaves her lungs, because Adora fights the Horde, and Catra can’t leave the Horde behind.

They’re two sides of the same stubborn coin, and they’re at a stalemate that they’re both determined to break. Only, Catra knows that Adora won’t win.

“You will, though. You’ll come back.” It’s not true, but Catra says it anyways. “How long until the princesses are done using you? How long until they need a new figurehead? It’s only a matter of time.” She grins, one side of her mouth lifting slyly, putting up a facade once again. “I’ve always got a place for you, though.” She lets honey coat her tongue and yearning lace her voice. Catra knows those words are anything but throwaway. They’re true, truer than anything she’s ever said before. She’ll always have a place for Adora. She can’t let go.

But Adora’s angry now, and when Adora’s angry, she doesn’t like to listen to reason.

The spiders’ joints creak as they scrape at the rock from the outside, and it grates on Catra’s teeth. Sets her on edge. Sets Adora on edge, too, as she starts to pace.

Catra whistles, a soft and mourning melody, eyes flitting from side to side to find an escape route. She’s tired.

“Could you stop that, please? Your whistling? I’m trying to think.”

“You’ve never had a problem with it before. How’s now any different than a training simulation back in the Fright Zone?” Catra taunts.

Adora stops her pacing. Turns around. Looks Catra dead in the eye. “That was a game. This is real. It’s life or death, Catra, and I don’t know why you just can’t get it.”  
“Eh. Whatever. Robots come, you lift your sword, cut us all out, and get away scot-free, like you always do. You know, one of these days I’m gonna wear you down.”

“ **I can’t believe that I’m stuck spending what will probably be my last few moments on** Etheria **here with you,** ” Adora breathes.

“ **I hope these are my last moments,”** Catra lies. **“Three more seconds with you and I’m gonna—** ”

  
“ **You’re gonna what? Coward,** ” Adora says, and that’s not the right thing to say, because Catra’s unsheathing her claws now and backing Adora into a wall. _Coward_. As if Adora didn’t defect from the only family she’d had for her entire life. As if Adora didn’t leave Catra behind, cold and alone, with no one to turn to. _Coward_. As if Adora wasn’t the coward, and as if Catra wasn’t brave enough to survive on her own, to keep going and going and force herself to never let herself look back at what Adora meant to her.

“ **Moron,** ” Catra spits back, because it’s true. Adora’s being stupid. _Just come back to me_ , Catra’s heart screams, almost loud enough to force its way out of her mouth. But she bites it down, shoves those feelings down into the boiling pit of her stomach. Impossibilities have left her mind years ago. Fantasies are to be burned, and lost love along with them.

“ **I hate you.** ”

Catra wants to say _no, you don’t._ But she also doesn’t know if that’s true.

“ **I hate you,** ” she growls, and Adora shuts her up with a kiss.

Adora will never let her win, will never let her go. Try as they might, they’re bound up in some thread of fate that’s wrapped itself around both their pinkies and tugs them closer with each step they take further away.

They’re kissing six feet separated from spiders trying to kill them, a dark hallway at Catra’s back and a rock pile at Adora’s. They’re sworn enemies. Forever friends.

They’re everything and nothing at all, and Catra feels Adora’s hands grasp her shoulders and her lips soft as sugar against her own and she’s gone.

A kiss won’t bring Adora back. A kiss won’t turn her back to the side of what Catra knows is right, hopes is right, prays is right.

Knows is wrong, but can’t leave. Could never leave.

Maybe Adora’s right. Maybe Catra _is_ a coward.

But then again, she supposes, pulling back and gasping for air, maybe she isn’t.

She kisses her again. It’s desperate, now, urging her to leave behind her dresses and magical swords and fallacies of rebellion. She nips at Adora’s lip, slides her hands around her waist, presses one leg in between Adora’s two. Her pulse thrums in her neck, and she thinks, _I want Adora to kiss me there. I want her to feel my heartbeat._

Two sides of the same stubborn coin. That’s what they are. Because Adora doesn’t melt into her arms, doesn’t fade away, doesn’t at all comply. She braces her palms against Catra’s chest and flips her around, not breaking their kiss for a moment.

Catra wants to give in. Wants to let Adora hold her there, wants to let reality slip away, to run her hands through Adora’s hair and kiss her forever and ever.

For once in her life, she lets herself be weak. She melts into the rock behind her, lets all thought but _Adora, Adora, Adora_ slip from her mind, drifting away on a cotton-candy sunset. She feels Adora’s teeth at her collarbone and Adora’s hands on her back and Adora’s hair brushing across her face.

 _How did I let myself fall in love with you?_ she wonders, a pressure building at the back of her eyes. _How did I let you ruin me like this?_

And slowly, reluctantly, she detaches herself from her enemy’s embrace. Doesn’t look her in the eye. Pushes her aside.

“This means nothing,” Catra says.  
“On the contrary, I think it means _everything_.” Adora’s lips are kiss-swollen, and her breathing is shallow. Her ever-present ponytail is a wreck. _I did that_ , Catra thinks. _I unraveled her. She’s undone because of me_.

“All it means,” Catra says, “is that I thought we were going to die, and I’m still pretty sure that we might. So I wanted to do one last stupid, crazy thing before I left this world forever. I still hate you. I’m still going to have to fight you. The world doesn’t change just because of stupid things done in the dark, Adora.”

Catra forces the perfect facade that she’s mastered over the years—snide, reckless, uncaring cadet—to return, mask the absolute destruction of herself that Adora’s managed to render. But Catra can’t be weak. She can’t let her guard down or let herself get swept away in lovesick fantasies. So the Force Captain in her muscles its way to the forefront, beating aside the humanity in its path. “Now, come on. I have a rebellion to squash, and you have a Horde to try and beat. You’ll lose this time, Adora dear. I _will_ come out on top.”

Catra steps forwards into the darkness. Adora and her broken heart are one step behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so much to lesbinej on here/pebbleys on twitter for beta-ing this for me. This woman is a lifesaver and an incredible spelling-corrector. Kudos/Comments always appreciated :)


End file.
